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Buying a Mattress in Spain

Last updated: September 11, 20223 Comments

Here are a few notes I made while researching the purchase of a mattress in Spain. The mattress industry is aimed at confusing customers with excess supply, pushy sales tactics and high prices, so you have to be careful.

Do not consider any company that offers a trial period of less than 100 days. For example, Dormity only offers a 30 day trial period.
Beware of scammy offers. Dormity tends to have their mattresses always marked down by a huge percentage, in the ranges of 50-80% off. That is purely ridiculous, it’s very obvious that the price of a mattress is not €2,791 but €658 in the first place; there is no need to try to induce a sense of urgency in the customer just because you label the mattress with a huge discount. There are lots of gimmicks in the mattress industry, unfortunately.
Go to the shops and talk to the representatives, you’ll easily get an idea which are the good brands. If they just talk about the technical and complex details of the mattresses without talking about you and your needs, just walk away. The representative needs to be 100% focused on you and how you will use your mattress. He should ask you to lie down on various mattresses and check your spine’s alignment as well as discuss other factors such as your preferred sleeping positions and any injuries or problems you have at the moment.

As a guide range the best mattresses cost between 700 and 1000 euros.

If you’re unsure about what size of mattress to buy, check this link and this one.

For more information about the mattress industry read this and this.

The best brands I found:

How to Evaluate Private Real Estate Investment Proposals

Last updated: March 22, 20203 Comments

Peer to Peer and crowdfunding real estate platforms are an excellent way to get into the property investment game, but as you get more involved into this industry, you are likely to come across private off-market investment opportunities.

By private I mean off-market opportunities that are typically reserved to a much smaller pool of investors and are found through connections in the real estate world. By writing about real estate crowdfunding and talking about it to my friends and connections at conferences, I eventually got in touch with some big players who deal in specific types of property investments.

While the crowdfunding platforms tend to offer a wide variety of properties, such as student housing, new developments, buy-to-sell, buy-to-rent etc, typically the private investment scene tends to be more specific in type and geographical region.

The reason is simple. You will typically find a person or small team who have been working in the industry for many years and have become experts in the market of a particular city or region as well as a specific type of property.

To take Barcelona as an example, I know real estate experts who specialize in obtaining some of the most dangerous and untouchable properties in the city (occupied by squatters, drug dealers, etc), clearing them out and totally refurbishing them to go on and sell for a tidy profit.

Others focus on foreign buyers who tend to be looking for higher-end finishing and specific locations and types of apartments when compared to the local buyers. Since most local developers focus on the local buyers’ needs, there is a niche that opens up that presents nice profits if you manage to meet the high needs of the foreign buyers as well as be able to market to them.

These are real niches with lower competition due to the extra skills needed to succeed. In the first case, you need to be able to know how to deal with very difficult and possibly dangerous people and probably employ people who will do some brute forcing to clear the spaces, and you need to be good at marketing to convince buyers that these black spots are now a great buy.

In the second case, you need to have knowledge of the traits of foreign buyers and speak their language. This will make it much easier to design an apartment for that specific buyer profile as well as know where to market it and then be able to seamlessly tour the apartment with potential buyers and deal with any concerns they might have.

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N26 – The Best Free Bank Account with Spanish IBAN

Last updated: November 12, 202120 Comments

In an earlier post on this blog, I had talked about the best commission-free Spanish banks, and eventually came to the conclusion that the best option is to actually open an account with N26, which is a German bank that offers us the ability to open an account in a very straightforward way and manage everything from a mobile app.

Unfortunately, as some of you have pointed out, many Spanish companies refuse to accept non-local IBAN accounts for payslips or direct debits, leaving the majority of us with no option but to find a local bank to conduct our transactions.

N26 has decided to start offering Spanish IBAN accounts to their Spanish customers in 2019, solving that issue. For those who sign up through the link below from now onwards, you will automatically get a Spanish IBAN immediately.

For those of us who have signed up with N26 some time ago, we will unfortunately not get the option to switch to a Spanish IBAN. The only solution is to closer your current account and open a new one with N26, and then you will get a Spanish IBAN assigned.

Further reading: Best Online Banks in Europe

Guide to Renting a Car in Europe

Last updated: September 21, 20221 Comment

Traveling by car is one of the most enjoyable parts of our travel, and personally, I feel very relaxed when driving a hired car in most places around the world. I have driven in both North America and Europe (as well as motorbikes in Asia) and it’s been an awesome experience every single time.

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The Most Important Factor in Padel

Published: April 09, 2019Leave a Comment

So how do we win at padel? It’s the million dollar question, and perhaps one that tennis players especially ask when making the switch to this sport.

At first, for ex-tennis players, padel might seem like an easy sport since you get the impression that you don’t have to run a lot or hit powerful shots as you do in tennis. However, the fact that the ball remains in play much easier due to the walls can play havoc with newcomers to the sport. The natural instinct of most new players is to hit the ball hard to finish the point, however this is one of the worst ideas in padel.

The most important factor in playing padel is keeping the ball low.

It’s a sport that is decided by the number of mistakes one does more than the number of winners achieved. Thus, by keeping the ball low, we would be forcing our opponent into an uncomfortable return, increasing the chances that he will make a mistake or hit a high ball that would be easy for us to put away.

The video of the practice match below is shot at a very good angle that allows us to see how low the ball actually travels when the pros are playing. Although they make it look easy, return balls that are that low, at that speed and with that degree of underspin is extremely hard, unless of course you’re a pro player like them.

So there you have it, the most important factor in winning at padel is to keep the ball low and of course try to make as little mistakes as possible. In other words, try to use your head more than your physique, and the results will follow.

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